Long day at work today, so to celebrate its end and the end of my first full time week on the job, I'm drinking our last Magic Hat #9. Down the hatch! Decent beer is extremely hard to find here. Local grocery stores only stock "name brand" beer, that is Busch, Budweiser, Michelob, bleck, bleck, bleck. Trust me, I check the beer isle in every grocery store that we've been to.

I may have mentioned this before but Florida makes it extremely hard for small breweries to distribute their beer, which in my snobish opinion is usually far better than the swill that takes up the majority of space in the beer isle of the average grocery store. I think this, almost more than anything makes me miss Michigan. Magic Hat is distributed in Vermont but it reminds me of all the small breweries that are so easy to come by in Michigan. You could throw a dart at a map of the mitten and almost always land within 40 miles of a small brewery. So as I roll my head back and allow the last remnants of the almost pale ale to travel across my taste buds; I give a salute to all the microbreweries out there. Thanks for being so delicious!

The new job has been very interesting and very stressful at times. I'm working in a house with four TBI residents. Between myself and the two other life skills specialists, we usually have our hands full. The residents are all great people, but its quite a chore keeping things flowing smoothly in the house. Some of them don't get along with each other, new medications are being tried, poor decisions made and craziness ensues. I feel like Mad Eye Moody from Harry Potter, "Constant Vigilance!" I've only been working there a week and I could already write a book about all the crazy experiences that I have had. Its an experience that I will definitely remember in the future.

I was talking to one of my coworkers towards the end of the shift tonight and compared working at Communicare to having a second life. I leave my perfect little world with Linsey and Neville in our perfect little apartment with hardwood floors, a comfy bed and healthy food in our fridge and enter a new world each day with the staff and residents of Country Side. I've already become quite attached to the residents and their quirky ways. Its a whole new life for these people and being the one responsible for finding their strengths/talents/weaknesses and helping them overcome and use these to their best ability is an enormous task. I commend anyone who does this kind of work and regards it as more than just a paycheck at the end of the week.

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